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Change Windows Edition from Enterprise to Professional

Windows 10 is coming out tomorrow. You want to install the latest Windows version to have the new OS features but you found out that one of your computer is running Windows 8 Enterprise edition which is not covered by the free Windows 10 upgrade. If you don’t need the Enterprise features, you can decided to downgrade your Windows 8.1 Enterprise edition to Windows 8.1 Pro to have the free upgrade to Windows 10.

This post will show you how to downgrade / change Windows edition from Enterprise to Professional in a couple of steps. This procedure works for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 and you won’t need to reinstall your software and apps. The whole procedure should take about 30 minutes.

What you need

Windows 8 Pro media

A valid Windows 8 Pro product key

Valid backup of you data in case something goes wrong

Which version can be upgraded to Windows 10

The following Windows versions can upgrade free to Windows 10 Home:

Windows 7 Starter

Windows 7 Home Basic

Windows 7 Home Premium

Windows 8.1

The following Windows versions can upgrade free to Windows 10 Pro:

Windows 7 Professional

Windows 7 Ultimate

Windows 8.1 Pro

Windows 8.1 Pro For Students

The following charts shows which version of Windows 10 you will get depending of you Windows 7 / 8 version:

How-to change Windows edition from Enterprise to Professional

Here’s what’s to be done to change Windows edition from Enterprise to Professional:

Open Regedit.exe

Navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Change ProductName to Windows 8.1 Professional

Change EditionID to Professional

Navigate now to HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Change ProductName to Windows 8.1 Professional

Change EditionID to Professional

Close Regedit.exe

Start the Windows 8.1 Pro installation

Enter your 8.1 Professional product key when prompted

On the Chose what to keep screen, select Windows settings, personal files and apps

Review your selection and click Install

The computer will now reboot and once restarted you will have a Windows 8.1 Pro computer.

The next step is to update you PC using Windows Update. Once all updates are installed, you just have to wait for your computer to receive your free copy of Windows 10.

Bonus tip : Once the downgrade is successful you can safely delete the Windows.old folder to free up some hard disk space. See this link for detail on how to do this.

Founder of System Center Dudes. Based in Montreal, Canada, Senior Microsoft SCCM Consultant, 4 times Enterprise Mobility MVP. Working in the industry since 1999. His specialization is designing, deploying and configuring SCCM, mass deployment of Windows operating systems, Office 365 and Intunes deployments.

33 Comments on “Change Windows Edition from Enterprise to Professional”

Just wanted to add some additional info. Following the instructions above, I was using Win 7 SP1 Enterprise and wanted to downgrade to Pro, but install program complained i had installed and was using a later version of Win7. Tried building and using Win7 Pro slipstreamed with SP1, but install program still had the same complaint. Then uninstalled SP1 and used the plain Win7 Pro ISO and that worked. Able to downgrade to Pro (minus a couple of DLL/file errors during the install). Finally, reinstalled SP1 afterwards. Thanks for the instructions!

Thank you for such a clear tutorial. Could you tell me (or give an educated guess) as to whether I am likely to be successful if I follow the exactly “analogous” procedure in a situation which is exactly like the one here with the following THREE variations:
1. I need to downgrade from Windows 10 Enterprise to Windows 10 Pro.
2. Actually, what I **really** need is to downgrade from Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation to Windows 10 Pro. (I have a valid Windows 10 Pro key).
Finally, to make things interesting:
3. I am some 3500 miles from the machine I need to downgrade, so I would like to do this using Teamviewer or remote desktop.

Do I have even a snowball’s chance in Hell that the procedure you suggest will work? Using either teamviewer or remote desktop, I can mount a Win 10 DVD i have on the remote machine. So all the steps ‘make sense’ and can be done. Thank you for any informed opinion you might be able to share.

(IN case you’re wondering why i would need to do something so stupid: On a recent visit with my mother, I learned that the dreaded Anniversary Update had hosed her perfectly fine installation of Win 10 Pro. Unfortunately, it even hosed the recovery environment. I tried various fixes I found online, whcih were based on the WIn 10 Enterprise Evaluation .iso that one can download for free. But nothing worked; in the end, I just installed that Enterprise Evaluation DVD, restored her apps and data, and took a plane home. Of course, now it is demanding to be activated,
So I need to downgrade ‘back’ to Win10 Pro. And I need to do this without losing the installed Apps, because my mother can’t really install Teamviewer.
Last question: Rather than mount the installation DVD remotely, could i just mount the .iso on the remote machine? I’m hoping that in your above procedure, the machine ejects the installation media before it reboots (because whether the machine mounts an .iso image or mounts the DVD on my desktop, the DVD won’t be mounted after the reboot.

First of all I want to say awesome blog! I had a quick question in which I’d like to ask if you don’t
mind. I was interested to know how you center yourself and clear your mind before writing.
I’ve had trouble clearing my thoughts in getting my thoughts out
there. I truly do enjoy writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes
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Many thanks!

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Hi,
I changed the information in Registry, after that i did reboot the windows.
when Windows started I downloaded the Windows 10 Web Installation file and it’s started and it’s downloading now.
it’s possible to install the windows 10 Directly after changing the Registry information without installing Windows 8 Pro ? or it will make a problem??

There’s no such thing as a volume license for Win7/8/10 Pro. Volume Licenses are just for Enterprise and Education customers. There are OEM licenses for Pro – that’s what Dell/HP/etc buy to make machines with. But regular customers can’t get those of course.